May Wrap-Up

 Hello Interwebs!

Once again I have not blogged at all this month but I did have a spectacular reading month for the month of May. I read a whopping total of 17 books in the month of May for a grand total of 4,443 pages. This brings my yearly total up to 41 out of my 52 book goal. I'm kind of hoping to hit 52 books in June and maybe make it to 100 books for the year but we'll see how that goes. I read a wide range of genres this month: 3 romances, 3 horror, 2 nonfiction, 5 manga, one historical fiction, one poetry, one classic, and one fantasy. The lowest rating I gave anything this month was a 3 star and many of my books were 5 stars. 

Now onto the books I read, also there may or may not be spoilers ahead. 

1. Delilah Green Doesn't Care by Ashley Herring Blake (Bright Falls #1): this was my first book finished in May 2022. This is a female-female romance starring our protagonist Delilah Green who is a photographer in New York City and is returning to her tiny hometown of Bright Falls to work as the photographer for her stepsister Astrid's wedding. Once there she meets her stepsisters friend again, Claire Sutherland, a single mom who owns and operates the bookstore in town. Hijinks ensue as the blossoming couple conspires with another of Astrid's friends to get the bride to ditch the less than stellar groom. I loved this book so much and all the characters. At first I didn't really care for the character of Astrid but now I'm very excited to read the second book in the series which will follow Astrid. I read this book from April 22nd to May 4th and gave it a very ecstatic 5 stars. 

2. Ice Planet Barbarians by Ruby Dixon (Ice Planet Barbarians #1): this was my second book in May and it was fine. This is also a romance and one that is all over booktube and Instagram and TikTok. It follows a young woman named Georgie who is abducted by aliens and then the "cargo hold" with her and a number of other girls is ejected and crash lands on a ice covered planet populated by these barbarian aliens (who are very tall and blue). She is found while scouting by an alien named Vektal and sex ensues. This book was fine. All sex and no real plot. I read it because TikTok and it was available on Kindle Unlimited. I will not continue on in the series. This was read from May 4th-5th and I gave it a fine 3 star rating. 

3. The Mermaid's Voice Returns in This One by Amanda Lovelace (Women Are Some Kind of Magic #3): This is the third book in Lovelace's Women are Some Kind of Magic trilogy of feminist poetry. I love Amanda Lovelace adn I think of this trilogy that the second one, The Witch Doesn't Burn in This One, is probably my favorite but they're all good. I read this on May 5th and gave it a 4 star rating. 

4. Heartstopper Volume 1 by Alice Osman (Heartstopper #1): this is the first graphic novel in a series about two boys: Charlie and Nick who go to the same school and after being assigned to sit next to each other develop feelings for each other. This story is so freaking cute and I love it and the art style so much. I had to order the next two graphic novels in the series and plan to read them in June. I read this on May 6th and gave it a 5 star rating. 

5. Riverman: An American Odyssey by Ben McGrath: this was the most recent pick for the Outside magazine book club and is about nomad Dick Conant who traveled thousands of miles of American rivers in a canoe over the course of 20 years before he disappeared near North Carolina. This book was fine. I don't know if just straight adventure nonfiction is really my jam to be honest. I listened to this book on audio from May 2nd to May 12th and gave it a fine 3 star rating. 

6. The Paris Hours by Alex George: this was a historical fiction book of the month I've had for like 2 years and pulled out of my TBR jar for this month. It was fairly short and follows a variety of people on a single day in Paris in the 1910s. I enjoyed this book well enough but there were a lot of characters to keep track of and although it's billed for a single day there's a LOT of backstory involved. I read this from May 6th to 12th and gave it a 4.25 star rating. 

7. Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner: this was my Literati book club book for Megan Rapinoe's book club. This is a memoir about a Korean-American woman and her relationship and journey with her mother and her mother's death from cancer. A lot of her relationship with her mother involves food and cooking. This book was so good and I absolutely loved the fact that it was narrated by the author. I listened to this book on audible during a weekend road trip from May 12-14 and I gave it a 5 star rating. This is easily one of the best memoirs I've ever read or listened to and I loved it. 

8. Fullmetal Alchemist Volumes 1-5 by Hiromu Arakawa (Fullmetal Edition #1-5): I'm going to group the next five books into a single entry for brevity's sake. I read the first five volumes of the Fullmetal Alchemist Manga series in like six days (and then bought all the remaining volumes that are out so far). I love the Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood anime which follows the Manga series very closely. 

    Volume 1: Read May 14-15, 5 stars 

    Volume 2: Read May 15th, 5 stars 

    Volume 3: Read May 16-17th, 5 stars 

    Volume 4: read May 17-19th, 5 stars

    Volume 5: read May 20th, 5 stars 5.14-5.15

13. When the Reckoning Comes by LaTanya McQueen: this was my first horror novel of the month and ended up being one that I really enjoyed. This was a slow burn horror about a woman named Mira who is returning to her hometown as an adult for the wedding of her school friend. The wedding takes place on a plantation where horrific things happened including a murder that her other friend Jesse was blamed for. On the plantation they have reenactments from the slavery days and as Mira spends the nights there on property it becomes clear that the plantation is very haunted by the misdeeds of the past and it all comes to a head on the anniversary of a slave rebellion. I read this from May 12-24th and gave it a 4.5 star rating. 

14. The Haunting of Ashburn House by Darcy Coates: this was The Book Troop pick for May. This is about a woman named Adrienne who has fallen on hard times after the death of her mother when she inherits Ashburn House from a great aunt Edith who was said to be mad. As she moves into the mysterious house Adrienne begins being haunted by the house's mysterious former inhabitant. I really enjoyed this one and I only kind of saw the twist coming and then only part of it. I listened to this book on Audible from May 24-27th and gave it a 4 star rating. 

15. The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: this is a classic Poe short story (about 36 pages total) about the narrator who comes to visit an old friend, Usher, at the titular house. When he arrives Usher's sister is dying and then dies and they lay her in the tomb in the house. Then it turns out she's not dead and comes back to get her revenge for being entombed alive and kills her brother while the narrator runs away and the house crumbles into dust (both physically and metaphorically). I read this story because What Moves the Dead by T Kingfisher is a retelling of it and it's been years since I read it. It's a decent story but very slow. I read it from May 27-28th and gave it 3.75 stars. 

16. What Moves the Dead by T Kingfisher: this is an upcoming release that comes out on July 12th (my birthday) and I received an ARC of this from a goodreads giveaway. This book was absolutely amazing. I read it in like two sittings over two days time. It was a fast-paced quick read with a super great twist on the story. I'll try to publish a full review of this here soon. I read this from May 28-29th and gave it 5 stars. 

17. Carry On by Rainbow Rowell (Simon Snow #1): finally I reread Carry On due to book three in this trilogy being on my June TBR for pride month. I know how much I love the Simon Snow books but it's like I forget exactly how much I love them until I pick them up again. This is essentially Harry Potter if Draco was a vampire and they were in love. Simon and Baz are some of my favorite characters, period, and I absolutely love this book. This book feels like coming home, as cliché as that sounds. I read this from May 29th-31st and reiterated my 5 star rating. 

So that's it, all 17 books I read this month. I didn't dislike any of these books although some were definitely not my favorites. My favorite new read was definitely What Moves the Dead by T Kingfisher, seriously read this book when you have the chance it's so great (although Carry On is still an all time favorite). My least favorite was probably Riverman by Ben McGrath, not bad but definitely not my jam when it comes to books. I hope you had a great reading month as well, mine was fantastic. 

Happy Reading!

Richelle

May Preview

 Hello Interwebs!

So this it is now May and aside from the books I've already got started and my two book club books I will be reading for May this is the first month that I'm going to be doing my TBR jars (which I literally finished Friday morning). So I have a series of jars that I'm putting little capsules with my TBR books on them by genre: horror/thriller; classics/retellings/poetry; general fiction/historical fiction; sci-fi/fantasy, nonfiction; romance. Each gets a jar so I can pull books out at random to read. In addition to my physical TBR books I've also put in a set number of Kindle slips and free slips to pick an ebook or any book I feel like reading. So I pulled one book from each jar and got a good selection for this month. 

First up I have the two books I already have started. 

• House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J Maas (Crescent City #1): this is an audiobook that I started back in March and I'm about halfway through with it. I got distracted by other books on my audible so maybe I'll pop back to this one in the next month. 
  
  
  
• Delilah Green Doesn't Care by Ashley Herring Blake (Bright Falls #1): this is a paperback romance novel about Delilah Green, a photographer from New York who returns to her small town origins to photograph her stepsister's wedding and falls for one of her stepsister's friends, Claire Sutherland a single mom of a preteen daughter who owns a bookstore in Bright Falls. I'm about sixty percent done with this one and I put it down for Spring Fling-o-Ween and I should be finishing this up in the next week for sure. 
  
  
  
• It Happened One Summer by Tessa Bailey: this is the Schitt's Creek based romance that I've been wanting to get into and I will read it as soon as Delilah Green is done. 
  
  
  

Second I have the two books I'm reading for book club books this month. 

• The Haunting of Ashburn House by Darcy Coates: this is The Book Troop May pick. It's a haunted house/ghost story horror novel by Darcy Coates and I have it on paperback and Kindle Unlimited and hopefully this will become my first Darcy Coates book to finish. 
  
  
  
• Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner: this is my Literati book this month for Megan Rapinoe's The Call Is In Book Club. This is a memoir about about a young Korean American woman who loses her mother and talks about her Asian-American identity and her relationships with her family, especially her mom, and food. It sounds good and I'm excited to read it. 
  
  
  

Finally I have my TBR jar picks, this gives me a good mix of books and lengths and I'm excited to get into some of these. 

• When the Reckoning Comes by LaTanya McQueen: this was from my horror/thriller jar. This is a recent horror novel about a black woman who returns to her hometown for her best friend's wedding on a plantation turned posh resort complete with slavery reenactments. During the wedding weekend the friends have to face history both their own and the haunted history of the plantation. People keep raving about how great this story is so I'm excited for it. 
  
  
  
• The Mermaid's Voice Returns in This One by Amanda Lovelace (Women Are Some Kind of Magic #3): this was from my miscellaneous jar (classics/retellings/poetry) and it's the third book in her first poetry trilogy and the only book in that trilogy I haven't read. Her poetry books are my favorites and I am looking forward to this for sure. 
  
  
  
• The Paris Hours by Alex George: this was out of my general fiction/historical fiction about a single day in Paris in 1927 and a collection of people: a maid of Marcel Proust, an Armenian refugee, an artist who has Gertrude Stein walk into his studio, and the journalist who tells other people's stories as their lives cross on this one fateful day. It sounds good and I've had it on my book of the month shelf for ages. 
  
  
  
• Riverman: An American Odyssey by Ben McGrath: this book is my nonfiction TBR jar pick and one I heard about because it was the Outside magazine pick for April. The draw from the jar was actually a Kindle book which I have this on the kindle and also an audible version which is probably how I'll end up reading this. It's a nonfiction adventure type story about American folk hero Dick Conant who canoed solo along thousands of miles of American rivers before disappearing in North Carolina. 
  
  
  
• Ice Planet Barbarians by Ruby Dixon (Ice Planet Barbarians #1): this was also a kindle pick from my romance TBR jar and another TikTok made me do it book. This is alien smut and that's all I got for you about it. 
  
  
  
• Fullmetal Alchemist Volume 1 by Hiromu Arakawa (Fullmetal Alchemist #1): this was my sci-fi/fantasy jar pick and is for the manga series that my favorite anime is based off of (Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood). I have the first seven volumes of this in the Fullmetal Editions and I'm for sure going to read just the first volume but maybe more than that. It's about two brothers who are alchemists who are working for a way to get their lives back after they perform taboo alchemy. 
  
  
  

So that's it, everything I plan to read in the month of May. It's not one of my longer TBRs and with the shortness of some of these books I would say that I actually have a good chance of finishing most of them in the month. I'm pretty excited about all of these books and I'll try to do better about doing periodic updates through the month. 

Happy Reading!

Richelle 

Spring Fling-O-Ween 2022

 Hello Interwebs!

This is the official wrap-up for the Spring Fling-o-Ween readathon that went from April 27-30th. I had a good time participating in this readathon and actually managed to fulfill all of the prompts!

So there were three prompts for this readathon: 

1. Read a book with pink or yellow on the cover
2. Read a backlist thriller or horror book
3. Make a fall-themed drink or pastry to bring Halloween to spring

So I finished all three prompts (and just because one book wasn't finished until about 130am on May 1st doesn't mean it doesn't count) and my books were fine. Nothing crazy amazing or anything but enjoyable. 

So for the first prompt: read a book with pink or yellow on the cover I read Reckless Girls by Rachel Hawkins. The cover is all tropical and pink and yellow and floral and more than fulfills this prompt. 

So this is a thriller that was released in January of this year but I'm not sure I would really classify it as a thriller. So the first 3/4 of the book is pretty much just rich people drama with a side of everyone has secrets. Then in like the last 50 pages people die and it soon becomes a last man standing kind of situation. The book was fine. I would've like a more coherent idea of what the book was going to be. Like is it going to be rich people drama or is going to be a thriller based on rich people drama? More thriller and less drama would've been appreciated by me but it wasn't a terrible book. I gave it 3/5 stars. 

For the second prompt: read a backlist horror or thriller book, I did not go with any of the books that I had through I might read for this and decided instead to read a Junji Ito Manga instead. I picked out Fragments of Horror which isn't terribly long and is a collection of unrelated short stories, I think there's eight stories in it. I really rather enjoyed it. I think of the normal stories in it my favorites were Tomio: Red Turtleneck and Whispering Woman. They were both pretty good and creepy and everything I expected from Junji Ito. I think my absolute favorite was Gentle Goodbye which was not a horror story but was sad and hopeful all at the same time. I really loved it. So I gave it a 4.25 out of 5 stars. 

The third prompt was to make a fall-themed drink or pastry to bring Halloween to spring. So I went an easy way out for this and had a box mix of pumpkin spice muffins in the cupboard and pumpkin spice tea and a seasonal cider which I felt was very fall/winter in flavoring. So my muffins were the Krusteaz Pumpkin Spice Muffin Mix and they were very good. The mix is a little wetter than the others but after a couple extra minutes in the oven they turned out good. 

And for beverages I went for my favorite Pumpkin Spice Rooibos tea from Trader Joe's in my favorite Annabelle mug. It's sweet and spicy and I love it a lot. Plus it's in this beautiful tin. 

And then we had friends over for games and pizza on Friday night (29th) and my fiancé brought me home some Vanilla Bean Pear Cider from Atlas and it also gave me some serious bakery vibes especially with fall/winter vibes. It was delicious and I highly recommend. 

So there's the official wrap-up for Spring Fling-o-Ween. I found it a very successful readathon and I absolutely had a blast participating. Plus I love my pretty blue shirt. 

Happy Reading!

Richelle

April Wrap-Up

 Hello Interwebs!

It was a great reading month for me in the month of April for a change. I was really digging the romance vibes and after taking forever to finish a subpar horror novel I plowed through books this month. I finished 8 books in the month of April (one at about 130 in the morning on May 1st technically so I'm going to count it for April). Most of the books I enjoyed quite a bit but I did have a couple of misses. I read a total of 2,492 pages and my books had an average rating of 3.7 stars on Goodreads. So without further ado here's the books I read in April. 

• Such a Pretty Smile by Kristi DeMeester: this is the first book I read in April and probably my least favorite of the month. It's a new release horror that follows a mother and daughter in dual timelines: mother Caroline Sawyer in 2004 and daughter Lila Sawyer in 2019. Young girls are being torn apart by a killer force known as the Cur in a cycle that keeps repeating. The book was supposed to have a feminist bent but the end message seemed to be conform or die so I think I missed the feminist angle. This book was really not great. I lost interest halfway through and it took me two days to read the last fifty pages.. I read this book from March 29-April 9, 2022 and gave it a mediocre 2 out of 5 stars. 
  
  
  
• Break Your Glass Slippers by Amanda Lovelace (You Are Your Own Fairytale #1). This is the first book in Amanda Lovelace's fairytale poetry trilogy. This one is Cinderella based if Cinderella's happily ever after wasn't based on being rescued by the prince but rather if Cinderella broke her glass slippers and fucked shit up on her own. I love her poetry and follow her on every social media platform. I read the entirety of this book on April 10, 2022 and gave it a very happy 4.5 stars.
  
  
  
• The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood: So this is my first romance novel of the entire year and this is the book that everyone's been talking about since it's release last year. In this you follow biology grad student Olive and biology professor Adam, who Olive kisses to make her best friend Ahn believe that she's in a relationship so Ahn will let herself date the guy she wants. So Olive and Adam begin a fake dating relationship with definite grumpy-sunshine vibes and I was HERE FOR IT. This might actually be my favorite romance novel I have ever read. I read this book from April 10-19, 2022 and gave it the most enthusiastic 5 star rating.  I took advantage of Barnes and Noble's coupon for preorders and have preordered her next book Love on the Brain which releases later this year. Also this cover is absolutely adorable. 
  
  
  
• The Fine Print by Lauren Asher (Dreamland Billionaires #1): this is the first book in what will be known as my "tiktok made me do it" series. This is a spicy romance that is the first in the Dreamland Billionaires series and follows Rowan, one of the heirs to what is essentially Disneyland, and Zahra, a worker turned designer. Rowan's grandfather set tasks for his grandsons to fulfill before they can inherit their shares of the company and Rowan's task involves a revamp of the park which Zahra turns out to be an instrumental part of. This book was amazing and spicy and the characters were absolutely addicting. I read this book from April 19-22 and gave it a nearly perfect 4.75 stars. 
  
  
  
• Nine Lives by Peter Swanson: So this is the other book that I did not care for this month. This is a thriller and was The Book Troop book club pick for April from GabbyReads. This book follows a group of nine people who all receive a list in mail with nine names on it, including their own. Then people start dying one by one and no one can work out the connection between the names on the list aside from the fact that they keep dying. I didn't hate this book but it wasn't great. It was painfully obvious that they were trying to emulate Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None and it fell painfully, painfully short. Furthermore, it was even more painfully apparent how short it was falling because you're literally beaten over the head by references. There was a tiny twist at the end that I didn't see coming but overall I didn't care about the characters, certainly didn't care that they were dying, and didn't care enough to puzzle out the plot. I listened to this book on Audible from April 22-26 and gave it a sad, sad 2 stars. 
  
  
  
• I Am I Am I Am by Maggie O'Farrell: this was the pick for Cheryl Strayed's Wild Reads book club on Literati for April and it's a memoir told in episodes of near-death experiences. Some of them were legitimate almost died moments like a man holding a machete to her neck in South America while others were sillier like volunteering to be the target for a knife thrower at a festival. All in all this book was amazing and I really really enjoyed the format and subject matter for the memoir. I think I will be picking up her very popular novel, Hamnet, in the next couple months as I did love her writing style. I read this book from April 10-27 and gave it 4.25 stars.
  

The last two books I read in April were both for Spring Fling-o-Ween so I'll give the reviews and everything in the wrap up for that. 

• Fragments of Horror by Junji Ito: this is a horror manga/collection of short standalone stories by my favorite author/artist. I read it on April 28 and gave it 4.25 stars. 
  
  
  
• Reckless Girls by Rachel Hawkins: this is a recent release thriller about young people on an island. I read it from April 28-May 1 and gave it 3 stars. 
  

So that's it, everything I read (or listened to) in the month of April. My favorite book, hands down, was The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood which I gave 5 stars too. My least favorite books which I gave a disappointing 2 stars to was Such a Pretty Smile by Kristi DeMeester. Keep an eye out for my Spring Fling-o-Ween wrap up which should go up later today and my May TBR which should be up in the next couple days. 

Happy Reading!

Richelle